New Zealand vows to strip liberties

Reactionary policies are a dangerous tool politicians use to cause change and garner support. Although they have the ability to do good, because of their rushed nature they are often not well-thought-out. New Zealand’s reaction to the Christchurch shooting does nothing but disarm its citizens.

According to The Washington Post, March 21, just six days after the Christchurch shooting in New Zealand which left 49 dead, Prime Minister Jacienda Ardern announced that “military style semi-automatic” weapons will be banned. This ban will affect all semi-automatic firearms and shotguns capable of being used with a detachable magazine which holds more than five cartridges.

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Banning guns is not the answer to preventing terror attacks”

These policies warn of the direction many Democrats are moving in America. According to The Washington Post, both Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have praised New Zealand’s move. Similar bills have been proposed in the past in Minnesota but failed to become law. Hopefully, the unalienable rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment will continue to hold up against any similar reactionary approaches in Minnesota.

Every American, and person of this world, should have the means to protect themselves from radical extremists, hostile foreign powers and tyranny on the homefront. If the government decides to strip your liberties, you are powerless without the protection guaranteed by the Second Amendment.

Banning guns is not the answer to preventing terror attacks; bombs can be far more effective at taking human lives. Supposedly the Christchurch shooter specified in his manifesto that he chose using guns over more potent methods of attack in order to create more chaos. The exact details of the manifesto are obscure due to New Zealand’s censorship.

The fundamental problem with banning guns is that in doing so you assume there is no way to illegally acquire a gun. The truth about such strict gun control laws is they do nothing but disarm law-abiding citizens. Even in this scenario — which is being used to push gun control — authorities still don’t know where Australian Brenton Harrison Tarrant acquired all of his guns, according to The New Yorker.

There will always be people who are either demented or caught up in some sort of radical ideology, who will carry out these atrocities. Ultimately, a choice needs to be made between freedom and ineffective protection by the government.

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My name is Henry Brettingen, and I like writing about politics and opinions. This is my first year on the echo, so I don’t yet know what I’ve gotten...

1 Comment

One Response to “New Zealand vows to strip liberties”

Lucy on
April 10th, 2019 6:54 am

New Zealand is right. Citizens don’t need guns that are able to kill that many people, and banning those guns lowers the number of shootings. People need to check their privilege as Americans because we have more shootings than any other country. Regular police officers don’t even carry guns in England and the crime rate is extremely lower than ours, not just because of size.
A weapon like a knife will still hurt people, but the likelihood that it will kill as many people as an automatic weapon would is extremely low. Lives could be saved because of this legislation, and if we did it here, Americans don’t deserve the right anyway to have automatic weapons because we’ve proven we can’t handle it. Your right as a person to own a gun shouldn’t be more important than the right to life for the thousands of people who are killed each year.

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